A. Area of Invention
The present invention relates to electric vehicles applicable to consumer, commercial, and other applications.
B. Prior Art
The invention relates to an electric motor driven vehicle having one or more electrical energy battery packs, an electric motor, an electrical recharging device, e.g., an electric generator or alternator, and switches to provide a source of electric power to the motor from one or the other electrical battery packs while the non-power providing storage pack is being recharged and to methods of operation thereof.
With the growing concern over air pollution, petroleum shortages and other problems associated with gasoline, natural gas, diesel or other fossil fuel powered vehicles, the automobile industry is in the throes of devising power systems which are increasingly less dependent upon the internal combustion engine (ICE). There are at least three relevant alternatives presently available. One is a purely electric powered vehicle which, as presently designed and marketed, requires recharging from outside sources at frequent intervals. The other is the so-called hybrid vehicle which has both an electrical motor and a hydrocarbon burning engine; the one augmenting the other to produce greater mileage, and therefore less pollution, per unit of hydrocarbon consumption. There is a third, the hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicle, the efficaciousness of which is not yet proven.
Efforts to improve the self sufficiency of the purely electric powered automobile have produced a number of different designs, none of which promise to minimize or eliminate the necessity of frequent intermittent outside charging of their electrical storage cells. Certain designs rely upon an electric motor driving an electric generator through selective gear and clutch mechanisms. Other designs provide a generator powered directly by a free-running wheel. See, for example, Unsworth, U.S. Pat. No. 4,496,016. However, such designs do not disclose battery packs which are separately charged and separately supply electric power to the vehicle. These designs either do not provide circuit connection with electric storage packs nor do they demonstrate direct connection to a battery pack separably or independent electric power to the motor. See, for example, Al-Dokhi, U.S. Pat. No. 5,921,334. Certain further designs demonstrate charging of battery packs through regenerative action of braking wheels or coasting of free-running wheels while the motor or engine is idling. None of these demonstrate an ability to provide sufficient electrical recharging to minimize the frequency of recharging from an external source. Prior designs, to the inventor's knowledge, do not demonstrate a method of recharging an electrical battery pack which is independent of the driving motor in a disconnected manner and which maintains the entirety of the electrically powered drive system independent of the electrical charging system.
Other art of interest includes U.S. Pat. No. 4,119,862 (1978) to Gocho, which teaches an electric motor car in which an electric motor of the car is energized by a fuel engine driven generator and a battery is connected in parallel with the motor until charged by the generator. Gocho involves complex switching functions that can only be effected with an invertor and induction motor.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,886,647 (2005) to Gotta teaches use of a dual motor axle driven system in which the vehicle is powered by a first electric motor when the measured speed of rotation of the drive shaft is less that of a threshold value and is driven by second electric motors when such rotational speed is above the threshold value.
The present invention includes one or more of battery packs as well as one or more electrical recharging devices, each of which perform a separate and defined function in achieving optimal overall performance of the vehicle and in addition which required use therein of a fuel engine to facilitate additional performance of a minimum of two or more of the generators of the system. Unlike prior art braking energy regeneration systems, the present invention enables capture of otherwise lost energy of momentum which is available for re-capture during periods of absence of vehicle acceleration.